


His Love to guard me through the night

by ivelostmyspectacles



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Angst and Feels, Canon Compliant, Complicated Relationships, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, M/M, Season/Series 03, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-03
Updated: 2019-07-03
Packaged: 2020-06-03 02:21:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19454347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivelostmyspectacles/pseuds/ivelostmyspectacles
Summary: and wake me in the morning's light.The night before the Unknowing, Jon and Tim share a room.





	His Love to guard me through the night

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by this [beautiful fanart on Twitter ](https://twitter.com/emperiocism/status/1145471411328356356)by emperiocism. I'm just so _wrecked_ okay, have an accompanying fic to go with the art and my still broken heart

Neither of them are sleeping.

Briefly, he wonders if Basira and Daisy are having a better go at it, but no. Probably not. Even Martin and Melanie, back at home but still not safe… Jon bites his tongue against the misery. Like Tim, he doesn’t break the silence.

The situation isn’t ideal. It hasn’t been for some time, but it had been slightly easier to ignore when not faced with the very real certainty that they would be attempting to stop the Unknowing come tomorrow. Because, come tomorrow, they will be.

He’s desperate to get away from it all, even if just for a few hours of sleep. As if he could be so lucky, but, then again, Tim is still awake, too. They’re not even pretending otherwise, which is… honestly, probably the most upfront they’ve been with each other since all of this started. But Jon is tired. There’s no masks tonight. He couldn’t put one on right now if he tried.

Tim, for his part, Jon thought he had stopped putting them on a long time ago. But it’s different tonight. Understandable, _really,_ but for all of the larger than life attitude Tim’s managed to express within the past couple of years– ranging from good-natured sarcasm of early days to his utter eagerness to communicate his frustration over their situation of late– Tim just looks… inconceivably small.

He’d barely said anything the whole day, and somehow still managed to get even more quiet as the night progressed. Now, he's curled up in the space of bed Jon isn’t inhabiting, with his legs drawn up so close that, a head taller than Jon, he thinks Tim shouldn’t even be _able_ to tuck himself into a space so small. He shouldn’t be physically capable of it, or of lying there with his head ducked to his chest and a hand wrapped about his knees and grasping at the blankets with the other. Of looking so unabashedly miserable that it exacerbates the agony in Jon’s own chest and sends it echoing out in a loop of hurt and regret and sheer, utter terror.

There is only one reason Tim would allow himself to be so vulnerable. Especially around _him,_ no less. Jon isn’t an idiot. He really doesn’t want to think about it. But he… he guesses that’s exactly what he has to do now. It’s time to face the music.

… and that is such a very bad turn of phrase. Jon shudders as the calliope starts up in his head, swirls around and around with Sasha’s voice _“do we know if it’s pronounced ca_ lli _ope_ or _calli_ o _pe?”_ and he squirms, uncomfortable, ready to abandon the whole idea of sleep if only they weren’t _going to stop the Unknowing tomorrow._ He takes a breath, and tries to stop the fear from choking him. He doesn’t succeed.

Tim’s still motionless, gaze directed somewhere past his kneecaps. But his fingers seize tighter around the blankets, the skin at his knuckles going taut and not relaxing. Jon watches them, and wonders briefly, so briefly, what Tim is thinking about.

Then the misery threatens to crush him alive, and he can imagine the taste of blood and salt on his tongue, and Jon pushes the thought away. He doesn’t want Tim’s thoughts. Those belong to him alone. 

God, they need to sleep.

How _can_ they, though? Tim’s on a suicide mission, and Jon has his doubts on if any of them will return. He has to protect the three of them– and those waiting back home– to the best of his ability, and that’s the reason he will absolutely not allow Tim to go off half-cocked with whatever they face tomorrow, but the fact of the matter is that their plan is halfhearted at best and he may not be able to protect any of them. They’re _all_ on a suicide mission, and Jon is so goddamn terrified.

He can’t get comfortable, and Tim winds tighter and tighter the longer they stay in silence, the more Jon tries to force himself to sleep. For a minute, he thinks if he shifts one more time, the tension in Tim is going to snap, and he will scream him into submission, and for that minute, Jon almost _wants_ him to if it’ll give them something other to do than _lay there,_ but the anger is wholly absent from Tim’s face, and it’s only then that Jon realizes Tim’s probably just as scared as he is.

In reality, he’s known that, too. For a long while. But it’s another one of those things that he hadn’t been able to dwell on. Now he has no choice.

Tim being _scared_ is somehow more frightening than the concept of stopping the Unknowing as a whole.

Jon tries to swallow the lump in his throat, and Tim’s hand relaxes around the blankets again.

He doesn’t know what prompts his next move, really– okay, yes, he does. He can’t let himself be miserable in the way that Tim is, that he has been. He isn’t _allowed_ that, even if no one says as much. He says as much. The Beholding says as much, in all the ways it’s taken away his peace of mind, sense of security, and parts of his humanity. But he _is_ miserable right now. In a different way than Tim is, but they are _both_ miserable. Right now, it’s just the two of them.

Expressing emotional sentiment has never been a strong point. He’s never been good with making connections– he works an archival position, for God’s sake– and emotion today is… far more fraught than he cares to let on _for_ the sake of everyone else. But he’s not a total loss in that department, mostly because of the fact that he has _warm_ people in his life: Georgie, teaching him comforting affection, Martin, passionate dedication, moreover with a cup of hot tea in hand. Sasha, Basira, Melanie, even Tim, in the days before the bitterness had become too much to bear. Daisy, in her own… questionably frightening way. But Jon’s not completely hopeless in this regard. Not yet, anyway.

He half extends his hand across the mattress, palm up; it is an invitation, if Tim wants to take it. Awkward, born of the overwhelming urge to just… suffer _with_ someone, instead of just _beside_ someone. Instinct, he supposes. The survivalist in him, maybe, rallying at the thought of what was waiting for them at the House of Wax. So, an invitation. And if not that, well, they can both pass it off as shifting about to get comfortable in a vain attempt to fall asleep. It wouldn’t be such a stretch of the truth.

For a long while, that’s all it really is. Tim doesn’t move, and Jon doesn’t know how he can stay so _still,_ how he can be so motionless like that when he’s usually the one with pent-up energy and emotion. Every fiber of Jon’s being is rebelling, screaming at him to _get up, go, flee._ To turn tail and run and never look back, even though he knows he’s not mentally or physically capable of it anymore. But Tim’s so still.

Up until when he smooths his hand across the blankets, hesitates, and shifts his hand up and over to Jon’s.

He still doesn’t take it, not exactly; it’s more he rests his hand over Jon’s wrist instead of actively taking the given hand. Like he can’t bring himself to do that, or just doesn’t _want_ to, and that’s _fair._ Jon isn’t sure he’d really been prepared for that, anyway, despite the fact that he’d been the one to offer. This is just… good, he settles on. Good as it is, with Tim loosely curling his fingers around his wrist. He passes the pad of his thumb against the delicate skin there, brushing up against veins in a way that almost makes Jon shudder because it’s so gentle and genuine and _contrast_ to Tim of late.

Then Jon watches as Tim makes a tiny, tiny face, like he doesn’t know why he’s doing what he’s doing. The drag of his thumb along Jon’s wrist stills, and… he just doesn’t pull his hand away.

… small comforts, Jon supposes. Small, terrible, traumatized comforts.

He drops off at some point, and when he wakes up, Tim is already gone. The shower’s running, and the sunlight is straining to make it through their drawn curtains. Jon stares at the empty, rumpled side of bed, and feels like death.

It’s just then the shower shuts off, and Jon can hear the sound of movement from the bathroom. He rolls over, and will pretend to be asleep for a little while longer. He doesn’t know if he’s affording Tim the privacy to prepare, or trying to spare himself.

God knows neither of them are ready to face the day.


End file.
